Posts Tagged ‘Alan Truscott’

Double Gaming: Chess and Bridge

How many chess players were in the New York Times Bridge column by Alan Truscott and also the Chess column by Robert Byrne? Well, I was. But I thought I had lost this ancient newsprint hardcopy! Mirabile dictu, it is found! Found, I tell you! I am not particularly good at bridge but at some point I managed to do a “squeeze” (think of chess zugzwang) and there it went into the Times! Here is the 1980 bridge hand clipping. Click to display it enlarged.

I am also going to shock the chess world with a young Ken Regan (and me) posing for a photo op in a Princeton University chess team story, circa 1979. There’s something very special about 70’s hair. Click a few times for best enlargement.

Ginsburg and Regan 4/9/80. Nice hair.

This clipping was from the “Daily Princetonian” 4/9/80 – it was a complete miracle that I graduated from this esteemed institution (rated #1 undergrad again in 2008, hurrah) in June 1980.

The National Chess League!

Feast your eyes on a news clipping describing Washington DC vs Berkeley in the 1978 (!) National Chess League; an inter-city league where the games were contested by telephone and “runners” relayed the moves (often times, games had to be partially retracted due to misheard relays). Click to enlarge. For more on my game vs. Christiansen (referenced in the post), see this entry. In the clipping, the reporter amusingly refers to Eugene Meyer as Gene Myer. Note that Berkeley’s Kaplan in the clipping report was stated to have only one minute to make 20 moves. This was pre-digital clocks! Nevertheless, the feat was not so incredible because between moves, even in mutual time trouble, minutes elapsed due to the byzantine runner system!

Berkeley Riot wins the 1978 National Chess League! (Click to enlarge)

If you don’t understand the team name “Washington Plumbers”, you may not be old enough to remember Nixon and the Watergate incident of 1974. Berkeley “Riot” was also amusing, bringing to mind the famous student protests of the 60s.